PART TWO

CHAPTER XIX

THE DESCENT AND BURIAL

And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock.

S. Matt. XXVII, 59, 60.

It is meet in very truth to bless thee the Theotokos, the ever-blessed and all-immaculate and Mother of our God. Honoured above the Cherubim, incomparably more glorious than the Seraphim, thou who without stain gavest birth to God the Word, and art truly Mother of God, we magnify thee. BYZANTINE.

'HE end had come-
-so it must have seemed to
those who had loved and followed our Lord.

As they came back from the burial, those of them who had remained true to the end, as they came out of their hiding places, those others who forsook Him and fled, they met in that "Upper Room" which was already consecrated by so many experiences. They came back from Joseph's Garden, S. John leading the blessed Mother, the Magdalen and the other Mary following. S. Peter came from whatever obscure corner he had found safety in. The other Apostles came one by one, a frightened, disheartened group, shame-faced and doubtful as to what might next befall them. The thing that to us seems strangest of all is that no one seems to have taken in the meaning of our Lord's words about His resurrection. Not even S. Mary herself appears to have seen any light through the surrounding darkness. I suppose that so much of what our Lord taught them was unintelligible until after the coming of the Holy Spirit that they rarely felt sure that they understood His meaning; and when the meaning was so unprecedented as that involved in His sayings about the resurrection we can understand that they should have been so little influenced by them.

S. Mary's grief would have been so deep, so overwhelming, that she would have been unable to think

of the future at all save as a dreary waste of pain. She could only think that her Son who was all to her, was dead. She had stood by the Cross through all the agony of His dying: she had heard His last words. That final word to her had sunk very deep into her heart. She had once more felt His Body in her arms as it was taken down from the Cross; and she had followed to the place where was a Garden and a new tomb wherein man had never yet lain, there she had seen the Body placed and hastily cared for, as much as the shortness of the time on the Passover Eve would permit. And then she had gone away, not caring at all where she was taken, with but one thought monotonously beating in her brain,—He is dead, He is dead.

It would not be possible in such moments calmly to recall what He Himself had taught about death. Death for the moment would mean what it had always meant to religious people of her time and circle. What that was we have very clearly presented to us in the talk with Martha that our Lord had near the place where Lazarus lay dead. There is a fuller knowledge than we find explicit in the Old Testament, showing a growth in the understanding of the Revelation in the years that fall between the close of the Old Testament canon and the coming of our Lord. There is a belief in survival to be followed by resurrection at the last day. That would no doubt be St. Mary's belief about death. That is still the belief of many Christians to-day. “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." There are still many who think that they have accepted the full Revelation of God in Christ who

have not appreciated the vast difference that the triumph of Christ over death has made for us here and now.

So we have no difficulty in understanding the gloom that fell on the Apostolic circle, accentuated as it was by the very vivid fear that at any moment they might hear the approaching feet of the Jewish and Roman officials and the knock of armed hands upon the door. What to do? How escape? Had they so utterly misunderstood and misinterpreted Christ that this is the natural outcome of His movement? Had they been the victims of foolish hopes and of a baseless ambition when they saw in Him the Christ, the one who should at this time restore again the Kingdom to Israel? They had persistently clung to this nationalistic interpretation of His work although He had never encouraged it; but it was the only meaning that they were able to see in it. And now all their expectations had collapsed, and they were left hopeless and leaderless to face the consequences of a series of acts that had ended in the death of their Master and would end, they knew not how, for them. Was it at all likely that the Jewish authorities having disposed of the leader in a dangerous movement would be content to let the followers go free? Would they not rather seek to wipe out the last traces of the movement in blood?

So they would have thought, gathered in that Upper Room, while outside the Jewish authorities were keeping the Passover. What a Passover it was to them with this nightmare of a rebellion which threatened their whole place and power passed away. What mutual congratulations were theirs on the clever way in which